


Seriously, I'm Not the Boogeyman

by Aravis



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Presumed Dead, Still Werewolves, Tumblr Prompt, monster under the bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:12:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aravis/pseuds/Aravis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Filling a tumblr prompt by wednesday-d on tumblr; Derek as the Boogeyman, hiding under Stiles' bed, dreams, eventual Sterek...</p><p>So! I hope you guys enjoy, I'd love feedback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seriously, I'm Not the Boogeyman

It starts when Stiles’ mother passes away. He gets home from the hospital, his father delicately tucking him into bed, his face creased with pain and stiff with tear tracks. He spends a moment with one hand on Stiles’ forehead, watching his son with a keenness that hints at desperation.

John Stilinski opens a bottle of whiskey and Stiles tosses in his bed, one small hand draping over the edge of the bed. The darkness beneath his bed seems to gather and something corporeal forms, not quite able to hold its shape.

It can sense the small human above it, can feel the pain. Red eyes gleaming, it stretches shadowy tendrils through the mattress, reaches around the child’s torso and clenches. The boy gasps in his sleep, pinned to his bed by the force from below. He couldn’t possibly be aware of what is truly happening, which gives the shadow the courage it needs to form above the bed, a hovering black shroud that stares down at the sleeping child, unsure if malevolence will be needed or not.

Preferably not, it decides. This child is already leaking pain and traumatic emotion, enough that it will feed the shadow for months, if not years. It strokes a tender bit of darkness across a simple spattering of moles at the child’s jawline, fond. 

Stiles won’t realise something is wrong until he’s five, when a five fingered, unexplainable bruise materialises across his shoulder, as if something large had hovered over him, clasped him when he was vulnerable, _held_ him. 

He gets nightmares frequently, but they seem to pass from him before they can truly build, as if something leaches them away, pulling them from his skull before they form into the terrifying, desperate shape of hospital beds and a beautiful, half-forgotten woman Stiles can’t quite believe is dead.

 

\--------

 

He turns six, a small party, something that’s tinged with sadness, and he knows his father will pull out that familiar bottle, something a kid his age shouldn’t really understand or even have to think about.

He knows it has something to do with his mother, and can’t help feeling he should have loved her more, should have tried harder, done _something_ to keep her with them.

Stiles blows out his candles with a smile on his face, but his chest feels like its bursting. 

The guests leave and the house goes quiet. John tucks Stiles into bed, heads off into his own bedroom; Stiles can hear him sob, once, before he stops himself, aware of how close he is to his son. 

Stiles isn’t asleep, this time, when the shadow seeps from under his bed. He watches it form, creeping, gently sliding across his bedspread until it can pool heavily onto his bed, across from where he’s braced against the headboard. He holds his small, toy bat fiercely in both hands, glaring as red eyes come into view.

“I’m not scared of you,” he says, shaking. He hopes that he doesn’t wet himself, from the expression the fog of dark seems to level back at him.

_Please,_ it seems to say, looking back at him with a kind of exasperation. He lowers the bat, thunking against his knees, glares at the wall. The shadow stays at the end of the bed; Stiles watches it out of the corner of his eye. 

“What are you?” He asks, finally, curiosity peaked. The thing twitches, an outer expansion of its shape that fades quickly, the shadow coiling into itself, tightening its outside edges. It doesn’t seem to have any kind of human shape, and Stiles can’t help but wonder what it is. This strange creature that seems so fascinated with the dusty underside of his mattress.

_I’m the Boogeyman,_ the shadow says, seriously.

“Oh,” Stiles says, disappointed. He puts the bat on the floor and shuffles back under the covers. 

_That’s it?_

“Seriously?” Stiles retorts, bravely. The shadow hisses and Stiles flinches, but stares back at it. 

_Hmph._ The shadow seems to be waiting for something, and Stiles finally sits up again, exasperated and exhausted now. His emotions rise, anger at the shadow for annoying him, sadness for his father, shame at losing his mother, everything just collecting and finally he explodes.

“Just go away!” The shadow pulls back, startled, watches as Stiles cries, big tears rolling down mole-dotted skin. 

Stiles lets himself cry for a few minutes, embarrassed at his outburst, but relieved that finally, there’s someone who won’t try to hold him while he cries. The shadow just watches, emotionless, waiting. “What do you want,” he sniffles a while later.

The shadow creeps closer, outstretched, a five fingered shape he remembers tracing on his own hip. _Feed,_ it explains. Before Stiles can pull away, its fingers - he supposes they _could_ be fingers - delve into Stiles’ core, shocking him at the strange, dusty, empty feeling that chases the intrusion.

“That feels...” Stiles stops, aware of a sudden lightening. His chest loosens, and some part of the emotions that have been running high for the past few days seem to dissipate. The shadow withdraws and Stiles sits up straighter, staring at the red-eyed creature. “What did you take?”

_Whatever you give me,_ the shadow responds, cryptically. Stiles groans at the adult-style response.

“You’re no fun,” he pouts. The shadow forms a grin, something that shocks Stiles with its familiarity.

_Go to sleep, Stiles._

Unsure why he obeys, not questioning how the ‘thing’ knows his name, but more relaxed than he’s been in a few weeks, Stiles sleeps.

 

\--------

 

It turns into a pattern; the shadow, the ‘Boogeyman’ coming to him after his father goes to bed, seeping from beneath his bed-frame and gathering on his bed to meet him. Every time, the thing gets a little closer, and the longer Stiles sees him, the heavier he seems to get. 

His dreams now involve the shadow, and he’s scared, scared because the things he dreams about always seem to end up dead. 

He turns sixteen and Scott gets bitten in the woods. There’s a huge fiasco with him, wherein Stiles figures out that Scott is a werewolf - which apparently are a thing that exist.

He’s ranting about all this to the shadow, his dad on night patrol, and it doesn’t even occur to him that the shadow has taken a form not so different from a human’s, that it’s eyes still burn red, but they look like human eyes, red at the centre and white all around. It doesn’t occur to him to be scared of this strange nighttime visitor he’s had for over ten years, since it’s been so regular, so on-time that he’s never really decided to question it.

For all he knows, he could be dreaming the whole thing.

The shadow must eventually get tired of him, of Stiles’ ranting, referring to him as the ‘Boogeyman’, telling him about Scott, because he slams a claw-tipped hand into Stiles’ chest, pressing him back onto the bed with a mouth full of fangs lingering above his head.

“Hey,” Stiles chokes out, gasping around the incredible weight on his torso, “those are new.” 

The shadow rolls its eyes and slides clawed, sharp tendrils under Stiles’ shirt, making him shiver as the edges catch on his nipples before drawing lower, centering around his abs and then diving in with that same, familiar dust-empty feeling. Stiles watches as the thing takes in whatever it is that it feeds off of, shadow-face creased and billowing in concentration. 

He reaches a slow hand up, unsure why now, after all this time, he’s tempted to touch his shadow stalker. He makes contact and the thing freezes, shape solidifying for one interesting moment into a man, a broad chested, muscled, sculpted _god_ of a man. But he leaps back, separating from Stiles’ hand and the instant the contact is severed, his shape reverts back to the shadow form, spitting and coiling on itself.

_Don’t touch me,_ it snarls, hissing at Stiles. It dives beneath the bed, coiling into the darkest space, dissipating until Stiles can barely even see the red from where he’s hanging upside down.

“Holy shit, dude!” He calls after the thing, before he crashes onto his head on the floor, unbalanced in the almost-yoga position he’s manoeuvred himself into.

The shadow doesn’t dignify that with a response, simply curls further in until Stiles can’t see at all. 

He doesn’t see the shadow for a week after that. It doesn’t really bother him, the first night. He calls out to the shadow just the once, to be a little shit, he supposes, as he’s been wont to do. “Can’t get it up tonight, or what?” 

There’s no response, and Stiles goes to bed, grumbling to himself about dysfunctional shadows and their boundary issues.

Six days later, however, Stiles is jittery, his medication doing nothing to ebb the tide of stress and anxiety that’s building beneath his collarbone like rising fire. “Hey,” Stiles starts, clearing his throat. His leg jumps beneath him, the covers quivering over his limbs. “I’m sorry, ok? I won’t touch you again.”

For a long minute, he thinks that he’s ruined everything, that the shadow, like everything else, has left him. But then the familiar slight chill and that same fog roll from beneath, and there it is, hovering at the end of his bed. It stays huddled, almost as if it's crouching; Stiles can practically see the disgruntled expression on its face.

_Keep your hands to yourself,_ it warns, once, before it darts over Stiles, like it’s afraid he’ll try something new. Stiles stays utterly still as the shadow looms above him. The same familiar weight presses him down on his back, elbows sliding out from beneath him. He looks at his shoulders and sees, beneath the ripples of shadow, something like hands, claw tipped and strong, veins like black water running over pale flesh, before the shadow films it over, like he’s looking at a blurry photo.

He looks up at the shadow’s face to see it watching him, burning eyes fixed on his face. Stiles flushes at the attention and looks pointedly at the ceiling, ignoring the way his mouth opens and his breath hitches when the shadow drags a less-gentle hand down his torso. 

The relief comes immediately, his chest lightening and his jitters slipping away as his stress becomes needless, familiarity just as much a comfort as this ritual. The shadow watches him sink back into the pillow, eyes half-shuttered. It doesn’t move its hands from Stiles’ waist for a long moment. Finally, it withdraws, leaving a space that Stiles hasn’t noticed was empty, and, still watching, folds in on itself and sinks back into the dark beneath him. 

He doesn’t try to touch the shadow again for a long time.

 

\----

 

He should really have expected this, that the ‘Boogeyman’ wasn’t just a figment of imagination, or some weird spirit that just benevolently decided to haunt _him_ of all people. 

It happens when Scott walks into his room, eyes gleaming amber with Change, the moon heavy outside the window. His nose flares and he shoves Stiles into the wall behind him, claws shredding the front of his shirt.

“Jesus, Scott, what?” Stiles yells, irritated at the push and the damage to his _favourite_ shirt. 

“There’s another wolf here,” Scott hisses, swinging his head back and forth, scanning Stiles’ room like its hiding a bomb.

“No there isn’t,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. He pushes at Scott’s arm and the other teenager shoves him back, attention focused on the room. It doesn’t help that Stiles cracks his head when he stumbles back, letting out a faint “ow” before he lets himself slide down the wall.

Scott’s turning to look at him, face terrified as he realises he’s just thrown his best friend into the _wall_ but before he can reach out to Stiles, the shadow is there, looming, forming, hovering; it’s growling at Scott, mouth full of fangs and eyes _red_ but angry now, not the red Stiles is used to.

Scott doesn’t cower, but Stiles can see the urge to in his friend’s knees, the slight quiver that gives him away. 

“Get away from him!” Scott manages, finally. Stiles rolls his eyes and stands, ignoring the fact that the shadow has crowded closer to him, is peering down at him with worried red eyes, clawed hands laying gentle touches over his scalp and down across his shoulders.

“I’m fine, geez, stop, really,” Stiles complains, batting at the shadowy figure until it subsides, sending him a meaningful look.

“Stiles, what the hell is that thing?” Scott yells, trying to edge around the shadow. It doesn’t let him, staring menacingly down at Stiles’ friend and flaring the red in its eyes like a challenge. Scott’s eyes flicker yellow and human again, uncertain.

_I have a name,_ it bites out, glaring. 

Stiles helpfully adds in, “yeah, we’ve established the Boogeyman, dude.” The shadow rolls its eyes, presses a hand against Stiles shoulder to push him back, further away from Scott, who still looks like he might wolf out.

_That’s just you, idiot. My name isn’t the Boogeyman._ The shadow looks amused, despite the glare he’s still levelling at Scott. Scott growls, a low rumble in his chest that makes Stiles lets out a sound of aggravation.

“Seriously, guys. My dad is at work, but I have neighbours. Can we ixnay with the eyes and the claws and whatever the hell it is that you’re doing, being like eight feet tall?” Stiles eyes his shadow, watching as it hesitates, then shrinks back to its familiar height, just around six feet tall. Scott takes a step back, but Stiles can see his fingers are still sharp-tipped and his stress-level boosts again.

_Leave,_ the shadow hisses at Scott. Stiles stares openmouthed at it before he decides he’s had enough of oddly possessive childhood monsters and barrels past - well, he attempts to. 

The shadow catches him around the waist, slings him at the bed hard enough that he bounces. Scott lets out a wild yell and tackles the shadow, eyes burning yellow. The shadow firms under Scott’s attack, teeth gritted as it rolls to push the werewolf beneath it. _Enough,_ he snarls, face inches from Scott’s. His eyes burn red and Scott stares at him, confused. 

“I know you,” he says, face twisting before he looks at Stiles. “Stiles, I think I know this guy.”

“Uh, no you don’t!” Stiles says, frantically trying to disentangle himself from the heap of bedding the shadow tossed him into. He scrambles onto his knees only to trip and crash to the floor, cradling his now-bruised knee. “God damnit.. Scott he has literally been under my bed for ten years, I think I would notice if he was just _wandering_ around.”

_You wouldn’t,_ the shadow says, and Stiles realises that he’s just given the shadow a gender, and it hasn’t rejected it.

“So, you’re a guy? What kind of guy? Please tell me I haven’t been harbouring some murder-rapist in my bedroom for ten years. Dude, that’s just sick.” Stiles continues, babbling until Scott and the shadow stare at him, as if _they’re_ the ordinary ones, the shadow still pinning Scott by the throat to the floor. 

“No, Stiles - his eyes. They look like the guy who bit me.” The shadow pulls back, looking between Stiles and Scott like he’s deciding something.

_That wasn’t me,_ he says, finally. Scott stares up at the shadow-man above him, plucks at his large hands, still wrapped viciously at his throat. He lets Scott go but doesn’t move far, just sits back enough to let Scott slide free of his grasp. Stiles notices that he’s still between Scott and Stiles, that he’s avoiding Stiles’ gaze.

“Ok, what the hell is going on?” Stiles bites out, angry now. “Scott? You told me you didn’t see what bit you. And you? Shadow-dude? You need a name, and I want a backstory, like _now.”_

They both glare at Stiles, but Scott starts talking first. He can’t tell if the shadow looks relieved or not, but he suspects so.

“It had red eyes, and it looked dark, I guess.” Scott shrugs, and Stiles wants to smack his forehead. Scott is kind of an idiot. Looked _dark._

“Scott, it was nighttime. Everything looks _dark_ at night,” he snaps, ignoring the faint guilt he feels at Scott’s sheepish look. “And you- your turn, dark knight,” he quips, ignoring Scott’s faint groan at his pun.

The shadow doesn’t look very pleased to be interrogated, but he hasn’t dissipated or fled, so Stiles thinks he might actually get some answers this time. _I’m not a werewolf -_ He starts, and Stiles yells, “I told you so!” at Scott before the shadow can continue. _Shut up and listen, idiot. I’m not one now, but I was. Now I’m - this._ He gestures to his shadowy form, which moves like smoke as his hand passes by it.

“Huh. Incorporeal. You dead or something?” Stiles asks, senselessly.

Scott and the shadow stare at him. _“_ Wow, Stiles, harsh. You can’t just ask someone if they’re dead.” 

“I think I just did,” he retorts, staring at the red eyes of his shadow. “Well?”

_You’re not very good at self preservation, you know._ The shadow heaves a sigh, dark smoke billowing. _No, I’m not dead._ Stiles smiles and opens his mouth to say something to Scott, but the shadow keeps talking. _Not yet, at least._

“Wait, are you alive somewhere? Is this your body? Oh my god, is your real body like, buried somewhere or something?” Stiles feels himself building up to a rant and controls himself with titanic effort. He deserves a reward.

The shadow looks pained. He glances at Scott. _If what your friend is saying is true, than there’s another wolf out there who survived, more intact than I did._

“Survived what?” Stiles asks, edging closer to the man-shadow. 

_The fire,_ it says, gaze darkening for a moment. 

“Stiles,” Scott says, trying to gain his attention. “Remember the old Hale house?” Stiles looks at Scott, noting the jump and increased rolling of the perimeter of the shadow’s body. 

“Yeah, what about it?” 

Scott twists his hands, looks at the shadow and blurts out, “they died there, the Hales. All of them.” He glances carefully at the shadow, like he’s expecting another violent outburst.

The shadow stays silent but draws itself up, straight. _Not all,_ he says.

Stiles shuffles closer, staring at the shadow with newfound interest. This is unreal. “What’s your name?” 

The shadow turns, considering him for a moment. Whatever he finds there seems to satisfy him, because he’s answering, voice unsteady for a moment, like he’s remembering. _It’s Derek. Derek Hale._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here!](http://opheliajane.tumblr.com/)


End file.
